


wish upon copper coin

by antagonists



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 16:24:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7369057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antagonists/pseuds/antagonists
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thoughtfully, Hijikata bends down to pick at a fallen charm, rubbing at the faded ink with his thumb. Even with age, the paper is smooth and whispers hints of history and residual magic. The black scrawl is similar to what he’d seen at the hidden libraries of forest and sky, the scars etched all over Gintoki’s skin. Written records and spells of a lost civilization, kept alive by memory alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wish upon copper coin

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to elmer for watching me crank out this shit until like 3am
> 
> sorta confusing if u havent watched forever yorozuya; there's a ton of vague references in here

*

 

 

On a clear night, Hijikata sees in the distance a fire that hails from the skies. Even as the horizons are set ablaze, the ship rocks slowly, unperturbed and untouched by storm and flame.

 

“It’s seasonal now,” says one of the sailors as Hijikata continues to gape. “Never been East before?”

 

“I’ve been away long,” Hijikata admits, and the crew member simply shakes his head. His expression is not quite pitying, but not very welcoming either.

 

“You chose a bad time to visit,” he continues. “Weather’s strong this year. Firefall is heavy; the earth is brittle.”

 

Hijikata glances at the sailor, back to the embers that fall from molten clouds. If he were to let his eyes lose focus, the fiery storm would look like the beginnings of sunrise. “Why?”

 

The sailor shakes his head again, pointing to the talisman hanging around his neck. Black spells are stark over white wood.

 

“Bad luck to speak of it,” is the reply, and the man disappears quickly down the rope ladder, leaving Hijikata without explanation and to face the high winds alone.

 

Aside from the angry glow a long ways off, the night is tranquil and quiet.

 

The sea whispers secrets around the ship, glinting with moonlight as if to offer the occasional coy smile. He turns to face the opposite direction; if one looks far enough, the night sky and deep seas would seem to almost blend together, leaving the ship suspended in nothingness. Unsettled, Hijikata looks away and breathes in slowly, counting the knots in the wood beneath his hand.

 

When he climbs down, there is still glazed moonlight on his back. He looks starboard and sees a sea of galaxies—a quiet overlay on the lulling crests of waves.

 

 

*

 

 

Guarding the gates to the bay town are two large stone lions, towering well over three times the height of an average man. Maws frozen in a perpetual roar, their stone eyes seem to shift restlessly, and though Hijikata knows that they cannot truly see him, he is no less bothered. Even the claws, each larger than his own hands, have been hewn carefully to bring out ferocious curves.

 

Past the stone lions sits a massive wooden gate, laden with clattering charms and thick rope wavering in the wind.

 

Hijikata moves just a bit closer, and the static that races up his body makes him stiffen mid-step.

 

“Ah,” he says in mild shock, and the guide next to him snorts loudly, as if exasperated with newcomer’s naïveté. Her hair is long and the color of a firestorm, stark against the white of her robe. She carries an umbrella in one hand, and had Hijikata not seen the dust fly up whenever the tip hit the ground, he would have assumed it to be some sort of vain accessory. Upon closer look, steel gleams from within wooden casing, deadly and unnerving. She studies his face in gruff amusement.

 

“You’ve come in contact with the town barrier,” she explains, running her gaze over his foreign dress in somewhat disgusted fashion. Once Hijikata recovers from the surprise, she continues to walk, dark boots heavy and confident on the ground. “Lucky for you, it didn’t sense any malicious intent. Otherwise you’d have been fried.”

 

“And other people have been caught in the ward,” he says, keeping his voice from raising in question. Hijikata feels as though his guide will mock him for not knowing otherwise, and he hasn’t the energy to argue with anyone.

 

“Loads,” his guide agrees. “Always such a bloody mess, really. I don’t like cleaning up after the ones that explode; that’s what Shinpachi’s for.”

 

Silently, Hijikata feels apologetic for this aforementioned Shinpachi. The name in itself sounds unremarkably plain, and it seems that anyone without outstanding physical and mental finesse suffers greatly under this woman’s cruel, pale hand.

 

“Is that so.”

 

The woman hums dismissively, and Hijikata falls into step behind her, watching the golden length of her sash sway with every step.

Around her ankles, blue cloth bends obediently as water would.

 

She catches his inquiring gaze, once, as they turn a corner by some nostalgia-inducing bakery. Her glinting smirk haunts him, and Hijikata makes sure to keep his eyes trained on the path before his feet. The crunch of stone reminds him of week-long journeys on foot, and the bitter lingering of the sea in his nose keeps him awake far past moonrise. He tries to concentrate on the familiar smell of mornings before rainfall, but falls asleep instead to the searing warmth of campfire and the taste of ember.

 

 

*

 

 

 

They tell him Gintoki chases after red dreams and golden wings, after memories and green promises. With the turn of rain to inferno, the silver of his blade fells more demon than corrupt official, tears through heaven-bound fowl and white prayer. Where are the brothers who’d watched over him during his sleep? The same brothers he’d cut down time and time again to watch the stars together?

 

“The Kiheitai is gone,” Kagura tells him, but Hijikata gets the feeling there is more to it than a simple disappearance. “After he got sick—”

 

“Gintoki?” Hijikata confirms, and Kagura nods.

 

“After he got sick,” she continues, “the fire started falling.”

 

“And?”

 

“He left for a long, long time.” She stares into the distance, legs crossed and hair swinging in the warm breeze.

 

“To look for them,” Hijikata says. Again, Kagura nods.

 

“He’s still sick,” Kagura frowns. “He visits sometimes, but he’s always so tired.”

 

Hijikata shifts, back aching with the roof tiles pressing into his spine and skin at odd angles. The moon is hidden behind a curtain of matte gray. Nights, at the very least, can be refreshing, if not a bit chilly with the biting winds. Still, there is the smell of a coming storm in the air, thick and cloying with smog and distant sparks.

 

“But he’s alive,” he says. Kagura is silent, like his words have wounded her more than anything else.

 

 

*

 

 

“We don’t need your help,” says the woman in front of him, tapping the brass end of her pipe on wooden doorframe. She breathes ash and wears scars of moonlight like garlands. Around her fingers are black stains from fire that she hasn’t bothered to wipe away, and they give her the appearance of a manic, diseased witch.

 

“I’m not here to—”

 

“Not here to help?” the woman asks sharply. She breathes in more smoke, exhales a stream of upset grey and gold. Magic, Hijikata realizes, but in a much more potent form than he has ever seen before. “Then why are you here?”

 

“I’m—searching,” he swallows nervously. “For someone who has saved me before.”

 

The witch taps her pipe again, impatient.

 

“I’m looking for someone important,” he repeats to clarify, nervous at the hollow noise of pipe on wood that echoes, over and over.

 

“And where did this someone go?” the woman asks. The villagers had called her the moon, alone and white-skinned in her dark, dark garments. When she’s not veiled in clouds of angry spells, she looks quite beautiful.

 

Hijikata looks away and continues only when her gaze presses into him. “I’m the one who left her.”

 

Satisfied with this answer, the moon witch steps aside to allow him entrance to the shivering shadows in her home. She leads the way into a different room, fingers alight with bright fire, stepping deftly over barren bone. Within her deep, jaded eyes of dusk, she relives the memories of watching loved ones walking away and leaving a thin trail of footprints—and they all fade with the coming rain.

 

 

*

 

 

“You’re alive,” Shinpachi notes in surprise, eyeing Hijikata carefully as he stumbles into the room. It is nearly sunrise, and Hijikata knows that he may have been gone for days. He seems to have lost his sense of time after stepping past stonework guardians and through spellbound gates. “Kagura said you’d gone to Tsukuyo’s.”

 

“And that warrants me dying—how?” he grunts, giving up on unlacing his boots and instead sitting back to catch his breath. The fire had started falling on his way through the burnt forest, and he’d almost been burned alive too many times to count. Above them, the barrier prevents any flaming hazard from reaching the village. Last minute protection from the Hyakka, Kagura had mentioned, before they’d vanished with the sunny weather. Clay tiles remain untouched from flame, but still glow like sunset with each ireful tempest that passes.

 

Hijikata wonders, absentmindedly, if any of the ships have sunken deep beneath the oceans, torn apart by the weight of scalding winds and burning fingers.

 

“She’s never minded the fires,” Shinpachi says. Broad-shouldered and solemn, had it not been for the hint of longing in his words, he would seem mature beyond his years. The worn sword at his hip must be a reminder of a better past, for he smiles wistfully at it when he thinks nobody is looking. “She encouraged them, really.”

 

Hijikata counts the wooden tags in his hands, painted over with thick black ink in ancient lettering and taboo spells. They remind him of the tarot cards, crystal ball reading and other scrying that had already been so sparse in his childhood. “I don’t aim to stop anything.”

On one of the tags, a white tiger bares its fangs. On its forehead is the character that Hijikata recognizes as _king_. _Ruler._ But the lands have not seen any ruler in ages, so he finds the symbol odd and foreboding. On another, a menacing blue fire. On yet another, a bird with midnight for wings and red jade for its eyes. Shinpachi casts the spell tags a perfunctory glance, but does not question the meanings. What he does not know, he cannot tell.

 

“Good luck,” he says instead, and Hijikata watches him head out into the fire, searching for legendary herbs of healing.

 

 

*

 

 

Before Hijikata had crossed the seas:

 

Before he’d forgotten how spring blossoms would make the skies seem awash with gentle warmth, he had watched winters pass, breathing in cold air through the red scarf of another’s. In his dreams, he crosses the threshold of fate and curses. A village lays frozen in time beneath emptied clouds.

 

He follows Tsukuyo’s directions, wanders close to the arid cliffs so that the dust he kicks up is swept over the edge. When he turns, he sees a figure with eyes of fire, covered in ribbons of white. Past all the unraveling bandages, Hijikata spots uneven poetry in black stains.

 

“You’re here.”

 

“They’d mistaken me for a jiangshi at first,” Gintoki grins, fingers tracing over the goldleaf symbols on his clothes. Hijikata can see why, since there’s no end to the loose bandages winding around Gintoki’s shoulders, his waist, his ankles, any bit of skin not covered by thick linen. “Since I work only after sundown, other villagers jumped to conclusions and tried to purify me.”

 

Hijikata’s eyes flick to the side and his lips twitch. From amusement, maybe. He’s trying not to stare too much. “And?”

 

“Western myths of staking the undead to ‘kill’ them are untrue, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Waving his hand dismissively, Gintoki sneers. “They tried waiting ‘til sunrise, first, then dunked me into a clay jar filled with purifying salts.”

 

“I won’t try to purify you,” Hijikata says as means of comfort, but it probably means little. Kagura had said Gintoki was sick, but he hadn’t been expecting a curse that runs deeper than history. They walk to the end of the cliff in silence, then Gintoki leads him through eye-watering smoke and bramble. Beneath his feet, brittle earth and bone break.

 

Landscapes of towering pillars of rock, carved smooth with the passage of forgotten waters and wind and time. Hijikata sees thick rope tied around boulders he passes, marking them as sacred. Underneath his feet, fallen scraps of old white paper mark the ground. Little paper figurines he recognizes as shikigami lay scattered on upturned stone with wilted limbs.

 

“What is this place?” he asks, awed by the way sunlight falls, how stone towers cast thick shadows through the golden light. From the splintered maw of tamed storm, the day spills forth.

 

“Used to be holy ground.” Gintoki looks around lazily, as though he’s walked these paths since they’d first been trod, passed through more times than there are stars in the skies. “A lot of the rocks have really weathered, though, and the charms haven’t seen new ink in centuries.”

 

Thoughtfully, Hijikata bends down to pick at a fallen charm, rubbing at the faded ink with his thumb. Even with age, the paper is smooth and whispers hints of history and residual magic. The black scrawl is similar to what he’d seen at the hidden libraries of forest and sky, the scars etched all over Gintoki’s skin. Written records and spells of a lost civilization, kept alive by memory alone.

 

Soft wind rustles through hanging ribbons of white. If Hijikata focuses on the quiet trickle of a stream that had once been a mighty river, he can imagine specters brooding where paper marks graves. Higher up, roots nestled among swaying stone, trees twist upwards with branches thick with berry and leaf. In the forest behind them, a bird cries, long and throaty, twice before it falls silent. With another step into the small sanctuary, past a faded red gateway, the hum of cicada and leafy whispers cease. Only the sound of water remains—and Hijikata suddenly finds his thoughts unbearably loud.

 

The tranquil is so thick that it sits, almost tangible, across Hijikata’s shoulders and within his fingertips. He pushes through the overgrown path, trying not to disturb the eerie silence with his breathing. It is as if quiet is the only thing holding the rocks in balance, offering placating prayers to the wandering dead. Over his heartbeat, the sound of running water grows louder in his ears.

 

“This place is untouched by fire,” Gintoki says lightly, breaking the tension and skipping over a shattered wooden sign. The world resumes, exhaling in a sudden burst of warmth and blossoming noise. “In the past few years, people stayed here in hopes of making it some sort of haven.”

 

“Doesn’t seem to have succeeded,” Hijikata forces himself to say, feeling bizarrely intrusive yet relieved now that he can breathe easier. He gives a furtive glance around the hanging trees, the swaying stone towers. “There’s no one here.”

 

“The people couldn’t have hidden atop the rocks forever.” One foot hovering over the burbling stream, Gintoki pauses, suddenly a statue balancing between two worlds.

 

“What is it?” Hijikata asks, stopping before the stream. The water is clear, the sandbed fine and full of glinting grain. He finds it somewhat strange; there isn’t any glimmer of small fish or the floaty drift of underwater plant life, just the steady current of cold mountain water.

 

After another moment, Gintoki finishes his step very slowly, heel barely past the edge of wet sand. His next step is just as languid, as if he’s forcing his leg through a pool of wild honey. “It slipped my mind that this water is often used for purification.”

 

“You can’t touch it,” says Hijikata, half-questioning, but does not mention the thin shadows that skitter up the length of Gintoki’s bared arms and neck. They seem to grow restless whenever he looks at them, shifting into different lengths of poem and verse quicker and quicker and in intense shades of violet. Hijikata stops looking after the second time, because although Gintoki doesn’t say anything, he flinches at the purple anger as if in pain.

 

“The river started to dry after a while,” Gintoki says instead, “and the people had to leave. This water is undrinkable to most anyways, and it can’t keep monsters away forever.”

 

They walk a bit further into the abandoned sanctuary, far enough to come across an old stone fountain still burbling with cold springs. Hijikata slides his fingers through the glassy surface, yet feels as though he is touching air.

 

“Wanna make a wish?” Gintoki asks, tossing a tarnished coin in Hijikata’s direction. Hijikata rubs at the copper, smells the acrid tang on his fingertips. He considers the dulled surface for a moment more before casting it towards the fountain. With no more than a few ripples, the coin sinks placidly to the bottom, joining the few others that leave marks murkier than shadow.

 

He’d done it so suddenly and without second thought; Hijikata realizes a second later that he hadn’t exactly been thinking of a wish.

 

“Care to share?” Gintoki grins, and winces when Hijikata unwittingly stares at the large blotch on Gintoki’s cheek. Heavy purple glimmers over his skin in the shape of the strokes for _Terror_.

 

“I didn’t make a wish,” he admits after averting his eyes. Gintoki snorts, wiping at his nose. The black on his hand smears with the careless gesture, scattering like ash in the wind over the backs of his fingers.

 

“Figured,” Gintoki mutters, and steps over more white. He rewraps the bandages around his arms, both hiding from the world and hiding miasma away from the fragile-hearted. Hijikata doesn’t say much, but he does think that Gintoki is trying to forget the nightmares that dark magic brings without much success. As they walk, more letters slither into place over Gintoki’s throat.

 

 

*

 

 

He watches the fire from behind one of the stone lions. First fall the small embers that turn to ash, then fall the flames larger than his fists, flickering with a heartbeat as they crackle over dried earth.

 

“Whoever you’re looking for is no longer here,” Gintoki tells him, unfazed by the fire that roars close to his head. Next to him, the lion seems almost alive, eyes no longer dull like stone. “Tsukuyo should’ve told you that and saved you the trouble of coming to ask me.”

 

Hijikata watches as fire disappears into the sea, and the water glows with sunrise colors before returning to its cold, unforgiving blue. There is smoke at his fingertips and ash in his mouth, bitter and foul-tasting. But he would drink even from a river of molten gold to watch ebony magic burn away empty canvas, would swim through sacred rains to become sought precious jade and mauve cloth reflected in Gintoki's dreams.

 

“I lied to her,” he says instead, leaning slightly closer. Around them, the world is set ablaze. Gintoki considers him quietly, then, and his eyes glimmer like the turn of an old coin.

 

 

*

 

 

 

 


End file.
